Week 68: The next step.

By the end of this week I will be returning to normal life for a while. So I've spent the past week preparing ideas and concepts for the year ahead of me. I feel this will be a pretty important year for promoting my ideas to the audience so a head start is a pretty good idea. I have started to think about identity and how society has it's own little ways to place you in the order of things. This has spawned from the past few weeks where I have been talking about priorities and order.

Thanks,
Dan.



This is a 35mm from my new project, there's not much to say about it right now as I'm still thinking of ways to progress the concept. There is a link here between photographer and model that makes it seem quite androgynous and curious. This is a little obvious to people who know me. However, for first time viewers it is extremely subtle. I like to play with familiarity whenever I get the chance. Make up artist was Juhi Choudhury.

The next few weeks I will be evolving this project, the posts will contain 35mm and 120 photographs from the past couple of shoots, I will attach ideas and improvements that have been whizzing around my mind recently.

Song listening to right now: Highwayman - The Highwaymen.

Week 67: Discover III.

When thinking about priorities and how to order them, I must first place myself in that order. Once I am sorted I can then sort out everything that is linked to me. These things include, money, career, friends, family and responsibilities. However, I am frequently searching for something that will set my priorities in stone. At the moment they are whizzing around in my mind like a whirlwind. This is where the improvisation that I spoke of recently comes into play.

Daniel.



Searching and improvising each day are the talents that these guys bear. The interviews with Mark, Chewie and the Italian were some of the greatest conversations I've had in years and forced me to discover how to interact with my subject matter in a way that I could only perceive as conventional.

Song listening to right now: Two Tickets to Paradise - Eddie Money

Week 66: Discover II.

My thoughts have changed this week due to certain events. However, I will carry on expressing the same views and opinions (on photography) I started with last week.

Dan.



This man was a friend of Mark's (see below). He seemed highly intoxicated with some Mozambique marijuana, which came in a branded plastic bag, labelled much like a crisp packet. He didn't say much and his friends couldn't understand him when he did so they named him Chewbacca. Now Chewie was friendly in the way that he danced at on coming traffic when coming out of his trance, but every now and again he would slap the air as though someone was attacking him. Quite frightening really.

Song listening to right now: What's this? - Danny Elfman

Week 65: Discover.

This post is all about my photographic priorities and how I think when out on location. You can discover some fantastic moments to capture if you wait all day for that decisive moment (Cartier-Bresson), or if you plan these moments from scratch (Crewsdon). However, sometimes when you are planning or setting up for that beautiful shot, you can accidentally stumble across something that has much more beauty. It takes perseverance to pull away from the original thing you obssessed over.

"Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore."
- Andre Guide

Please read on.
Dan.



This is Old Man Cemetery (Mark). This is not the photograph that was intended for this post. This week I was determined to go to a certain location to capture a photograph that I had noticed a few months back. Everyday I kept saying to myself, let's go there and just take it. The photograph had to be taken between six and seven o'clock (golden hour). This was how I had imagined the light to fall and I like to plan ahead. The photograph I originally intended to take was actually an architectural image that links back to Brutalism. However, my reactions took the better of me when I arrived on location. As a photographer you have to think economically, and judge your outcome by both your surroundings and subject matter.

I got to the location and set up the Hasselblad. It just so happened to turn out that I had timed my walk wrong and arrived just as golden hour was ending so I literally only had about 10 minutes to set up, meter and shoot. That's when something caught my eye. Even though I only had a short time before the sun went down behind the buildings of Reading town centre, I had to check this out. It was all a little bit of a blur. At first I noticed an old man dancing to cars as they went past, at least I think it was dancing, I can't quite remember now. Just around the corner from him were two other men sitting on a wall singing and wailing. I had never seen such a diverse group of friends.

I had to make a quick decision, was I going to ignore them and carry on with this photograph I had been planning for months? Hell no. Spontaneity, quick thinking and perseverance are also traits that come with being a photographer. To be completely honest, I had the perfect preconceived image on the ground glass viewfinder but it didn't seem quite as perfect as this group of homeless friends. I had to prioritise my subject matter in a very short amount of time. I though to myself, next time there is a pristine gold sunset the building will still be there. So I walked over to them and handed them a bit of shrapnel in exchange for a few photographs. They told me if I bought them a pack of cigarettes they'd let me hangout with them all evening. So I did.

Song listening to right now: Wicked World - Black Sabbath

Week 64: How to compliment II.

This is obviously the second instalment of my complimenting experiment. Two forms of lighting, and a similar set up. Photography is studying light. However a photograph is on the periphery of seeing real light. It stands back and let's you decide how to view the light that is captured by what Berger would call "a mechanical eye."

D.



Much like a previous project involving the doorway being an analogy for the shutter of a camera, I have been assessing the frame that is created by light. In staged and constructed images you have complete control over what the audience will see and what the audience will miss out on. Christian Metz speaks about this kind of "off-framing" in his essay "Photography and Fetish" where he compares the moving image (Film) with the still (photography).

"The filmic off-frame space is étoffe, let us say "substantial," whereas the photographic off-frame space is "subtle." In film there is a plurality of successive frames, of camera movements, and character movements, so that a person or an object which is off-frame in a given moment may appear inside the frame the moment after, then disappear again, and so on, according to the principle (I purposely exaggerate) of the turnstile."

He explains that the plurality of film allows the director to have more leeway with what he can or can't show. With photography it is final, whatever is cut out of the image is none existent to the audience, they can assume, but apart from assumptions everything outside the frame is frame-dead. However, I've decided there is a number of flaws to his point. Lighting that is outside the image can easily be figured out by a keen eye. Also, reflections of what is cropped out are visually existent but are not physically existent within the crop. For example, the catch-light in the eye of a studio model.

This photograph is showing the relationship between perception and light. Specifically constructed light situations are given to compliment in different manners. My advice (and that's all it is) to anyone that wants to experiment with light is simple. Time has to be taken, slow it down, move the lighting until the ambience is perfect, be picky, for God's sake meter it and note the reading down. The image is similar but the ambience is completely different. In this photograph, you can really make out the skeletal construction of the corset. The softness of the face contrasts really well with the simple harshness of the outfit. I genuinely believe that "photographers" need to understand how light actually works because that is literally what you are studying. The bare physics of it. I'm learning stuff everyday that surprises me, it's nothing abstract at all. The mood and emotional perception of a photograph is dependent on the physics of light, there are equations for these concepts.

Song listening to right now: Mother - Pink Floyd

Week 63: How to compliment.

For a while now I've been thinking of different ways models are complimented in fashion. I think the best way to compliment a model is through light. So I did a little visual research through certain magazines and decided to experiment.

Dan.



Again shot on the Hasselblad. So this week and next week I am going to post a similar image, but with different light situations. You (as the audience) can decide which is more complimenting. The dress is from Cape Town, SA. It has an almost exoskeleton like corset that encompasses a fitted slim dress. This post is almost a cliffhanger for you guys, wait and see what the image looks like with a different lighting arrangement.

Song listening to right now: Desperado - Eagles

Week 62: JD and smokes.

This blog has a role, it acts as an archive. This archive will eventually tell a long story of my progression through professional photography. I have always been told to keep reading, keep reading stories that nobody else is reading. Why? Because a narrative is much more than a progressive tale.

A narrative can be a singular image. A narrative tells a story, whilst a portrait reveals an individual. If a photographer can reveal the story of an individual through a portrait we can simultaneously produce a narrative. So is it right to conform to a linear progressive tale? Or can it be done simultaneously? This argument of the line and the circle has been mentioned before when talking about time/fate. The difference is, that both are possible in photography.

Daniel.



Shot on my Hasselblad 553, Kodak Tri-X 120 film.

Song listening to right now: Lithium - Nirvana